Search

This short paper provides the initial provocation for a themed issue that emerges from a conference on the topic of geographies of social crises/crises of social geographies. The article calls for a (re)consideration of the “social question” in the 21st century. We call for social geographers to engage with the historical dynamics of places and milieus to understand novel class societies and the violence that underpins social inequalities. The article makes a case for an empirically saturated social geography. We believe this provides a useful programme which helps to understand current phenomena of political, social and economic crises.

Rohstoffe werden derzeit überwiegend aus Primärquellen mit Hilfe aufwendiger hydrometallurgischer Verfahren gewonnen. Eine deutlich umweltfreundlichere und kostengünstigere Methode stellt das Bioleaching dar. Mit Hilfe von Mikroorganismen können die Wertmetalle aus Primär- und auch aus Sekundärquellen gelöst werden. Eine nachgeschaltete effiziente Aufreinigung und Separation der Wertstoffe kann durch gezielt designte Solventextraktionen oder Membrantechniken erfolgen.

The treatment of molasses wastewater, by a combined microalgae-activated sludge process, for the simultaneous organics and total nitrogen reduction, was examined. Further enhancement of the performance of the combined process was accomplished, by means of biofilm carriers or electrocoagulation. A LED light tube was immersed into the reactor tank aiming to enhance the growth of photosynthetic microalgae, while in a similar unit, biofilm carriers were added to the system, representing a moving bed bioreactor. Exposure of the activated sludge biocommunity to light source, resulted in the growth of microalgae and photoreactors exhibited higher removal rates of total nitrogen and nitrates. However, operation at longer times resulted in low effluent quality due to the presence of microalgae cells as a result of high growth rates, and potential light shading effect. Nevertheless, the moving bed system was more beneficial than the single photoreactor, as biofilm carriers provided a self cleaning capacity of the light source, reducing the effect of microalgae deposition. Advanced treatment of the biological effluents, by electrocoagulation, increased even more the process efficiency: the combined photobioreactor and electrocoagulation process resulted in about 78% COD removal and more than 35% total nitrogen removal in the effluent, where nitrates represented almost the single form of total nitrogen.

International audience; Surface coating and bulk treatment of wood are two effective measures which can, individually or conjointly, protect exterior wood from deterioration. This paper reports on the blue stain attack in coated wood, untreated and modified with DMDHEU, after six years of natural exposure.

Summary The continuously progressive education system of the 21st century requires the introduction of innovative teaching methodologies incorporating up-to-the-minute technology-oriented styles, which are capable of changing the traditional ways of conducting classes presenting teachers as the ultimate source of knowledge, with a new notion which considers teachers as facilitators and guiders in the world of information. A plethora of research has been conducted with respect to flipped learning, however, the number of research papers presenting content analysis is limited indicating the deficiency and lack of content analysis-based papers on Flipped Classroom in Education. Thus, to fill this gap in the literature, there is a demand for conducting a content analysis. In turn, the aim of this paper was to identify the importance and impact of the distributed documents on a Flipped Learning Model (FLM) in Education which was done by gathering data from the SCOPUS database with keywords ‘Flipped Classroom in Education’, within the range of ten years (2011-2020). All studies published in SCOPUS, were statistically analyzed and examined according to the year of publication, subject area, document type, country/territory, languages, source type, types of research and the research methods. It was found that the publications related to FLM in education had dramatically increased from the year 2011 to 2020. The findings of this study also highlighted the importance of FLM in education, especially in courses that require cognitive skills like social studies, medicine, and computer science.

Summary The research analyses incongruent Polish and British criminal law terms. British terms are the names of legal institutions characteristic of three independent legal systems: of England and Wales, Scotland or Northern Ireland. The Polish terms that have been discussed come from the Polish Criminal Code Act of 6 June 1997 (Journal of Laws 1997 No. 88 item 553). Moreover, they are legal terms pursuant to their interpretation by Morawski (1980, p. 187). The English equivalents under analysis have appeared in four Polish Criminal Code translations into English. The research aims at a verification of whether or not the classification of translation methods applied in the Polish-English translation of incongruent succession and family law terms (called civil law terms) (Kizińska, 2015, p. 175–178) encompasses translation methods used in the process of translation of incongruent law terms characteristic of criminal law into English. In the paper the translation method is interpreted according to the definition by Hejwowski (2004, p. 76). In the theoretical part of the paper the following linguistic phenomena have been presented: a term (by Zmarzer & Lukszyn, 2001, p. 9) and incongruity of terms (by Šarčević, 1989, p. 278). In the initial stage of the analysis the definitions of a given Polish term and its suggested equivalents have been compared. Next, the appearance of a given equivalent in the sources of British law texts as well as the English language has been checked to determine the translation methods used while forming a given equivalent. Finally, the list of translation methods applied has been drafted, to conclude, among other things, that the translation methods presented in the above-mentioned typology of translation methods applied in the translation of incongruent civil law terms from Polish into English are to be determined as exclusively primary or secondary.

This paper develops three analytical categories – range, supporting capacity, exigency/notability – to capture how supra-individual phenomena affect the people studied by empirical research. Researchers face a tension between constructivist and realist perspectives as the examined phenomena are simultaneously social constructs, in the way people perceive and understand them, and social facts in their consequences. Taking a critical perspective on the notion of large social phenomena – popularized by Theodore Schatzki – the paper develops an explorative terminology that aims to facilitate practice-oriented field research. Examples of empirical research on transition and degrowth initiatives illustrate how research subjects estimate the range of a phenomenon by trying to grasp whether they are in or out of its reach; the supportive capacity of a phenomenon by exploring how far it carries certain processes; and they experience the exigency of a phenomenon and ascribe a certain notability to it. Taken together, this terminology grasps the way phenomena are matters of concern, rather than matters of fact, for the research subjects.

Equality, a concept so central to democratic societies, is being scrutinized in a critical manner in this paper. It argues that the spatial borders of territorial states are also the limits of the validity of the principle of abstract equality, of its ideological productivity as well as its emancipatory potential. The paper discusses the Marxist critique of the limitations of the merely abstract, formal understanding of equality that is inscribed into the structures of democratic states, and the ways in which both the Marxist tradition and current theories of radical democracy find an emancipatory potential in the demand for abstract equality that makes possible going beyond its very abstractions. The focus of these discussions is on how spatiality is integrated into theories of radical democracy on the level of theory. The paper suggests that combining the insights on the productivity of spatial forms from discussions in human geography with the critique of merely abstract equality is a decidedly geographical contribution to the development of theories of the political.

Summary The paper aims to present the first pedagogic corpus of Lithuanian i.e. monolingual specialized corpus, prepared for learning and teaching Lithuanian in a foreign language classroom. The corpus has been collected as a result of the project “Lithuanian Academic Scheme for International Cooperation in Baltic Studies”. It is motivated by the need to have a more appropriate resource which could be representative, authentic and relevant enough concerning the process of learning and teaching Lithuanian as it is known that language represented in other existing corpora of Lithuanian (e.g. Corpus of Contemporary Lithuanian, 140 m tokens) is too complex to use for learning activities. The pedagogic corpus includes authentic Lithuanian texts, selected using such criteria as a learner-relevant communicative function and genre. Spoken language as well as written language are represented in the corpus. The size of the corpus is 669.000 tokens: 111.000 tokens from texts and spoken language for A1–A2 levels, 558.000 tokens from texts and spoken language for B1–B2 levels (according to the CEFR – Common European Framework of Reference for Languages). In this paper, we aim to discuss in detail the written subpart of the corpus (containing 620.000 tokens) which includes levelled texts from coursebooks and unlevelled texts from other sources. The level-appropriate labels were assigned automatically to the texts from other sources and this text classification procedure is presented in the paper. The texts from coursebooks and other sources could be classified into 29 text types (dialogs, narratives, information, etc.) and 4 groups according to the communicative aims: informational texts, educational texts, advertising and fiction. Informational texts comprise the biggest part of the corpus; three mostly represented text types differ in coursebook texts and other sources: the most common coursebook texts are informational, narratives, and dialogs (appr. 78% of all coursebook texts). Texts from other sources are represented with richer diversity – appr. 73% of all texts from this subpart can be classified into 5 text types: subtitles, informational texts, educational texts, fiction, and advisory texts. The future work making pedagogic corpus available for learners and its possible application are presented in the closing remarks.

Dans le champ des études urbaines, les travaux quantitatifs portant sur la mesure des ségrégations sociales ou des divisions sociales de l’espace sont souvent centrés sur le cas parisien et marqués par une faible profondeur historique, du fait en particulier des difficultés méthodologiques inhérentes à une telle approche. Cet article présente ici une analyse diachronique des divisions socioprofessionnelles de l’aire urbaine de Nantes sur quarante ans (1975-2015). L’approche méthodologique proposée est résolument quantitative et croise les apports d’outils et de traitements souvent mis en œuvre séparément. La première partie s’appuie sur les indices de ségrégation et de dissimilarité pour mesurer l’évolution de la ségrégation entre groupes socioprofessionnels, et montre la baisse de ces indices depuis les années 1970. La seconde partie mobilise une combinaison de techniques statistiques multivariées (Analyse en Composantes Principales, Classification Ascendante Hiérarchique, Analyse des séquences) pour proposer une typologie cartographique des formes successives des divisions socioprofessionnelles de l’espace. Ces analyses permettent notamment de documenter les dynamiques d’embourgeoisement et de gentrification qui affectent certains secteurs centraux de l’espace métropolitain nantais, tout en soulignant les situations de mixité socioprofessionnelle relatives qui prévalent dans la majorité des quartiers et communes de l’aire urbaine. Dans un contexte où les "fractures géographiques" des mondes urbains sont souvent évoquées, sans être pour autant établies empiriquement, cet article propose une objectivation quantitative de certaines questions au cœur du débat public français. Within the field of urban studies, quantitative research on the assessment of social and urban segregation mainly focuses on the Paris case. Research is also characterised by little historical depth, due in particular to the methodological difficulties corresponding to such an approach. This paper presents a diachronic analysis of the social segregation of the Nantes metropolitan area over forty years (1975-2015). It adopts a quantitative approach combining tools and processes that are often addressed separately. The first part of the paper uses segregation and dissimilarity indexes to measure the evolution of segregation between social groups; it demonstrates the decline in these indexes since the 1970s. The second part uses a combination of multivariate statistical methods (Principal component analysis, Hierarchical classification analysis, Sequence analysis) in order to provide a spatial typology of the successive patterns of urban segregation. These analyses bring evidence of the gentrification dynamics, which concern some central areas in the Nantes metropolitan area. Besides, they highlight the social mix configurations that prevail in most neighbourhoods and municipalities of the metropolitan area. While the urban spatial fragmentations are often mentioned without being empirically grounded, this paper brings a series of quantitative evidences concerning current crucial French political issues and debates. En el campo de los estudios urbanos franceses, los trabajos cuantitativos vinculados a medir la segregación social o la división social del espacio, se centran frecuentemente en el caso parisino y marcados por una baja profundidad histórica, debido a dificultades metodológicas inherentes a tal enfoque. Este artículo presenta un análisis diacrónico de la segregación socio profesional del área urbana de Nantes en cuarenta años (1975-2015). El enfoque metodológico es cuantitativo, combinando las contribuciones de herramientas y tratamientos que a menudo se implementan por separado. La primera parte aplica los índices de segregación y disimilitud para medir la evolución de la segregación entre grupos socio profesionales, y expresa el declive de tales índices desde la década de 1970. La segunda parte utiliza una combinación de técnicas estadísticas multivariadas (Análisis de Componentes Principales, Clasificación Ascendente Jerárquica, Análisis de secuencias) para proponer una tipología cartográfica de las sucesivas formas de segregación socio profesionales del espacio. Estos análisis permiten, documentar las dinámicas de un creciente aburguesamiento y gentrificación que afectan a ciertos sectores centrales del espacio metropolitano de Nantes, al mismo tiempo que destacan las situaciones de relativa mixtura socio profesional que prevalecen en la mayoría de los barrios y comunas del área urbana. En un contexto en que frecuentemente se mencionan las "fracturas geográficas" del mundo urbano sin ser establecidas empíricamente, este artículo propone objetivar cuantitativamente aspectos cruciales que están en el debate público francés.

Cet article propose d’appréhender l’impact des évènements politiques et économiques des années 1990 sur les dynamiques démographiques des villes centre-est européennes, selon une définition harmonisée de la ville sur le temps long en Europe. Il s’agit d’identifier les évolutions exceptionnelles qu’ont pu connaître certaines villes depuis 1961, notamment avec la chute du Mur de Berlin en 1989, qui signale un changement de paradigme de développement urbain en Europe centrale et orientale.L’article met en évidence une dynamique à double vitesse des villes situées sur la façade occidentale et orientale de l’Europe du Centre-Est. Il semblerait que le degré de développement urbain de ces villes soit lié non pas tant à leur taille qu’à la proximité de pays plus avancés, comme l’Allemagne, l’Autriche et l’Italie. Ces observations s’inscrivent dans le cadre de la théorie de la diffusion des innovations au sein des systèmes complexes et souligne l’importance de la proximité géographique, plutôt que de la taille des villes en termes de dynamiques urbaines. This paper examines the impact of the political and economic events of the 1990s on the demographic dynamics of Central-Eastern European cities, according to a harmonized definition of the city over time in Europe. The goal is to identify the exceptional changes that certain cities have undergone since 1961, particularly with the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, which signaled a paradigm shift in urban development in Central and Eastern Europe.The paper highlights a dual dynamic of cities located on the western and eastern fronts of Central-Eastern Europe. It seems that the degree of urban development of these cities is related not so much to their size as to their proximity to more advanced countries, such as Germany, Austria and Italy. These observations are in line with the theory of diffusion of innovations within complex systems and underline the importance of geographical proximity, rather than city size, in terms of urban dynamics. Este artículo tiene como objetivo comprender el impacto de los hechos políticos y económicos acontecidos en la década de 1990 en las dinámicas demográficas de las ciudades de Europa central-oriental, a partir de una definición de ciudad homogeneizada en tal continente en el largo plazo. Se identifican las importantes evoluciones que ciertas ciudades han evidenciado desde 1961, particularmente desde la caída del Muro de Berlín en 1989, que marca un cambio de paradigma en el desarrollo urbano de Europa central y oriental.El artículo evidencia el desarrollo de una dinámica de doble velocidad de las ciudades localizadas en la parte occidental y oriental de Europa central-oriental. Se observaría que el grado de desarrollo urbano de estas ciudades no está tan vinculado a su tamaño, sino más bien con la proximidad a países avanzados, como Alemania, Austria e Italia. Tales observaciones, se circunscriben en la teoría de la difusión de innovaciones, en el contexto de sistemas complejos y subraya la importancia de la proximidad geográfica, sobre el tamaño de las ciudades en términos de dinámicas urbanas.

Airport Security is a complex and important task directly affecting airports’ operational performances and passenger comfort. As part of the EU Horizon 2020 project PASSME, passenger centric airport and airplane interiors were redesigned in order to meet passengers’ needs and reducing door-to-door travel time. This paper will describe how simulation was used to provide early feedback as part of the security design process and for evaluating the outcome while avoiding high implementation cost and without disturbing operational processes. We will also describe the new developed security design concept as well as the simulation approach with Anylogic software. The simulation output – effects of the new design concept – will be discussed at the end of the paper along with an outlook on further research opportunities.

This paper explores the use of fuzzy difference methods in order to understand the differences between forest classes. The context for this work is provided by REDD+, which seeks to reduce the net emissions of greenhouse gases by rewarding the conservation of forests in developing countries. REDD+ requires that local inventories of forest are undertaken and payments are made on the basis of the amount of forest (and associated carbon storage). At the most basic level this involves classifying land into forest and non-forest. However, the critical issues affecting the uptake, buy-in and ultimately the success of REDD+ are the lack of universally agreed definition of forest to support REDD+ mapping activities, and where such a definition is imposed, the marginalization of local community voices and local landscape conceptualizations. This tension is at the heart of REDD+. This paper addresses these issues by linking methods to quantify changes in fuzzy land cover to the concept of data primitives, which have been previously proposed as a suitable approach to move between land cover classes with different semantics. These are applied to case study that quantifies the difference in areas for two definitions of forest derived from the GLC and FAO definitions of forest. The results show how data primitives allow divergent concepts of forest to be represented and mapped from the same data and how the fuzzy sets approach can be used to quantify the differences and non-intersections of different concepts of forest. Together these methods provide for transparent translations between alternative conceptualizations of forest, allowing for plural notions of forest to be mapped and quantified. In particular, they allow for moving from an object-based notion of forest (and land cover in general) to a field-based one, entirely avoiding the need for forest boundaries.

The potentiality of crowds, in terms of possibilities for achieving a livelihood in the big and dense cities, gains centre stage in contemporary urban studies dealing with the global South. These emergent effects of crowds act as dissociation of further work in urban theory from the global North that often displays a universalistic claim. However, contemporary urban theory both from the global South and North has astonishing less to say about internal processes of crowds that could be interpreted as emerging effects. The paper analyses the work on crowds by Peter Sloterdijk and the performative theory of assembly by Judith Butler in terms of theoretical possibilities to enrich contemporary thinking on urbanity in the South. The paper accentuates two important arguments for urban theory that could be fit into existing work in the field. Sloterdijk emphasises the “affective synthesis” of crowds and the build environment as an important mechanism of interaction between crowds and urbanity, whereas Butler elaborates the performative effect of crowds to articulate the right of owning attested rights.

This paper addresses the role of time and meaning-making in the global mediascape. Particular attention will be paid to the role of past and future narratives, connections of messages with a global outreach and time as a topic of communication. The empirical analysis will use a comparative approach to explore these different dimensions by analysing three global media events, such as, the sinking of the Titanic, the assassination US President John F. Kennedy and the Fukushima Daiichi incident. The main findings of the paper will show that time is a constitutional part in the process of meaning-making in global communication.

This paper examines questions of how issues of visual representation and vision have changed with the the quantitative and theoretical thinking in 1950s and early 1960s Anglophone geography. If the quantitative revolution in geography is understood as a scientific revolution, one should also expect a revolution of the ways in which geography made use of visualizations. At the center of this essay is William Bunge's “Theoretical Geography”, one of the founding text of this new geographical thought. This book forms the starting point for a discussion of the changed roles and changed forms of visualization in the production of geographical knowledge. Following Fred Schaefer's attack on Richard Harthorne, Bunge placed the search for morphological laws at the center of a geography that is strongly oriented towards geometry. In this paper, the text of Bunge serves as a starting point into the field of early analytical cartography and the first consideration of what later, become geographic information systems and their new visual language. In this paper this history of GIS is largely told without a history of technology a well as without its political context of the cold war and the Fordist state.

Teaching Turkish as a foreign language (TTFL) has recently gained much importance in modern life. For some reason, a large number of people and students with dissimilar background come from other countries so as to start off a new life primarily in İstanbul and/or many other cities in Turkey. Many of whom need to ensure their arrival and long term accommodations by visiting a language center. Some language institutes and foreign language centers, therefore have been trying to meet these needs and give a certificate in accordance with European language portfolio (ELP) levels. Through this paper it was attempted to clarify some certain questions showing up in this teaching performance of this outstanding language “Turkish”: “What type of challenges foreign students face in Turkish courses and how language teachers/instructors help them to get through these problems, what activities teachers carry out in the classroom and what materials and games they use in courses.” This paper reports the findings of a study aiming to reveal what mistakes the students make while learning their first, second or even more foreign languages and this study evaluates them through the more frequently used language teaching methods. Abbreviations: TTFL: Teaching Turkish as a Foreign Language L: Language FL: Foreign Language

Robust flutter analysis described in this paper is based on the robust control theory framework. Therefore, a time-domain linear fractional transformation representation of the perturbed aeroelastic system is modeled. Then, the robust stability is analyzed by means of the structured singular value $$\mu$$ μ , which is defined as an alternative measure of robustness. Robust flutter analysis deals with aeroelastic (or aeroservoelastic) stability analysis taking structural dynamics, aerodynamics and/or unmodeled system dynamics uncertainties into account. Flutter is a well-known dynamic aeroelastic instability phenomenon caused by an interaction between structural vibrations and unsteady aerodynamic forces, whereby the level of vibration may trigger large amplitudes, eventually leading to catastrophic failure of the structure. The primary motivation of the robust flutter analysis is that this method allows the computation of the worst-case flutter velocity which can support, for example, the flight test program by a valuable robust flutter boundary. This paper addresses the issue of an approach for aeroelastic robust stability analysis with structural uncertainties with respect to physical symmetric and asymmetric stiffness perturbations on the wing structure by means of tuning beams.

This paper undertakes a creative exploration of bulky rubbish [sperrmüll] in the City of Bonn by expanding on and utilising what has come to be known as non-representational thinking. Through a non-representational engagement with sperrmüll, I shed light on waste as a significant human-nonhuman ecology as it appears in an especially routinised manifestation in urban space. In doing so, the paper contributes to a discussion about enacting non-representational methodologies within German-speaking human geography. Here, there are three methodological interventions for a non-representational endeavour: (1) interfering, (2) material thinking, and (3) writing and presentation. These interventions are supported by revisiting Deleuze and Guattari's notion of assemblage; using it as a way to attend to sperrmüll as an area-sized fabrication connecting humans and various other materialities, and which directs thought towards a wide array of agencies. In conclusion, non-representational perspectives are advanced as a way to expose the affective ecologies that enable certain actions and hamper others.

Summary Main aim of this paper is to compare the classification accuracies of glacier change detection by following classifiers: sub-pixel classification algorithm, indices based supervised classification and object based algorithm using Landsat imageries. It was observed that shadow effect was not removed in sub-pixel based classification which was removed by the indices method. Further the accuracy was improved by object based classification. Objective of the paper is to analyse different classification algorithms and interpret which one gives the best results in mountainous regions. The study showed that object based method was best in mountainous regions as optimum results were obtained in the shadowed covered regions.

Recent debate in human geography has challenged the problematic "alternative"/"conventional" duality that characterises contemporary food provision. Within this binary, alternative food networks and initiatives (AFIs and AFNs) are positioned in opposition to more conventional, agri-capitalist modes of food production and distribution. Framing food around materially, discursively and spatially distinct, albeit relational, geographies not only reinforces this binary but also reaffirms the hegemony of agri-capitalism that alternative provision seeks to undo. Focusing on examples of artisanal and industrial bread production in the UK and the USA, this paper challenges such ontological framings. Drawing from conceptual insights into diverse economies and alternative economic spaces (e.g. Gibson-Graham, 1996:2004; Lee and Leyshon, 2003) and adopting an integrative approach to practice (Shove and Pantzar, 2005; Hand and Shove, 2007), this paper examines the practices that constitute artisanal and industrial baking. Specifically, it focuses on the ways in which embodied practices constitute the spaces of production for such foods. While acknowledging the considerable distances between the geographies that circumscribe these alternative and conventional foods, this paper argues that practices of food production narrow these distances, thereby destabilising the alternative/conventional binary. The geographies of food may mobilise an array of places, materials and ideologies, which are suggestive of two opposing systems of food provision, but practices of food production reveal an array of marginal spaces that challenge this. By reorienting critical attention onto these marginal spaces, the differences between artisanal and conventional food become blurred – and the affinities produced through normalised discourses and materialities of food are contested, resisted and disrupted. I argue these spaces are insurgent and that they come together through affinitive practices, which result in the potential for radical change within food provision.

This paper takes up the increasingly popular topic of drones — including Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), small unmanned aerial Systems (sUAS), Remotely Piloted Aircraft (RPA) and a vast panoply of commercial drones and copters — to argue that our analysis should lie not so much on drones as objects, but as assemblages of the vertical. Drones, I argue, constitute a socio-technical assemblage of the sky and vertical space, which means that our focus should be not (only) on their technological development and capacities (although this is certainly important) but on their wider effects and affects. The latter of these include increasing algorithmic data collection and circulation. In the second part of the paper, I examine what I call "algorithmic governance" inspired by the recent governing algorithms conference at NYU but also drawing from Foucault's work on governmentality. Algorithmic governance constitutes "conduct of conduct" to modulate how "data shadows" or Deleuzian "dividuals" can be created, sold, and passed forward. My particular concern is how this takes place in a geographic register.

The purpose of this paper is to research the effect of abandoning the assumption of long-term time horizon in terms of reliability of the Global Competitiveness Report (GCR) findings. In order to achieve this goal we will compare the GCR findings with the findings of a composite index of competitiveness, named 6 BIC (Basic Indicators of Competitiveness). We have developed this index on the theoretical basis provided by Krugman, Fagerbergs, Scott, Lodge, Aiginger and others. Economists are aware that any theoretical conception, including the GCR, relies on a number of assumptions and postulations. If some of those have been under scrutiny, then the whole construction and its findings would lose their credibility. One of the most significant assumptions rooted in the Global Competitiveness Report is its longevity. In the long-term, the change in productivity level through price competitiveness certainly brings out a change in outcome competitiveness level. However, the effects in short-to-middle term are not certain. Our findings show that there is a whole range of countries whose national competitiveness is either under-estimated by the GCR (for example Russia, Turkey, Estonia, Moldova) or overvalued (Finland, Ireland, Iceland, Portugal, Spain) in short-to-middle term. The basic conclusion from the obtained results of the research is that the GCR does not provide sufficiently good view of the current competitiveness of the countries, and that this indicator needs to be extended also with other competitiveness indicators, such as those selected in our paper.

This paper presents an architecture for Automated Valet Parking (AVP) connected to cloud-based IoT services and mobile user interfaces. The goal is to enable AVP services for automatic vehicles. From the user perspective, automatic car drop-off and pick-up are activated via smart phone application, and the user will be able to continuously monitor the vehicle status together with additional services as cleaning or recharge during the parking phase. Further, the IoT platform allows the integration of live services that will interact with automatic driving and parking. As an example, the presented AVP setup includes the operation of service drones to automatically guide a vehicle to the best parking spot. The demonstration in this paper comprises a parking car and a micro aerial vehicle (MAV) connected in real-time through the IoT platform as well as the smart phone application where the car is controlled and supervised.

To assess digital patient briefing as an alternative to conventional paper documentation. 502 patients with a planned computed tomography (CT) examination were selected for digital patient briefing using the E-ConsentPro software from Thieme Compliance on an iPad by Apple (Cupertino, California, USA). For the analysis, three age groups were formed. The time required for the patient briefing, the number of open questions as well as the time needed for discussion with physicians were determined. Student's t-test was performed to assess statistical significance. There was no significant difference between patient age and briefing time which was about 20 minutes on average. The number of open or unclear questions increased with patient age. While patients younger than 30 years of age had about 2 open questions, patients over 30 and 60 years had about 4 and 5 questions, respectively. The total time needed for discussion with physicians was less than 2 minutes on average. A significant difference in the time required for discussion with physicians could not be observed between the individual age groups. Tablet-based digital briefing allows the storage of patient documents with reasonable time and effort. Furthermore, it minimizes the risk of data loss. · Tablet-based digital patient briefing in computed tomography can be performed with reasonable time and effort.. · The time required for tablet-based patient briefing is independent of patient age.. · The cost-benefit analysis presents a significant improvement in digital patient briefing compared to the paper-based process..· Alikhani B, Hensen B, Grosser A et al. Initial Experience with Digital Patient Briefing in Computed Tomography. Fortschr Röntgenstr 2019; 191: 540 - 546.ZIEL: Die Möglichkeit der digitalen Aufklärung von Patienten wurde im Rahmen eines Pilotprojekts evaluiert. Für die vorliegende Arbeit wurden 502 konsekutive Patienten ausgewählt, die in der Computertomografie (CT) untersucht werden sollten. Die digitale Aufklärung erfolgte mit der Software E-ConsentPro der Firma Thieme Compliance auf einem iPad. Die Patienten wurden in 3 Altersgruppen unterteilt. Die Auswertung beschränkte sich auf die Ermittlung der Gesamtdauer der Patientenaufklärung, der offenen oder unklaren Fragen sowie des Zeitaufwands für ein Aufklärungsgespräch mit dem Arzt. Zur Prüfung von signifikanten Unterschieden wurde der t-Test durchgeführt. Unabhängig vom Alter bearbeiteten die Patienten den digitalen Aufklärungsbogen im Mittel ca. 20 Minuten. Die Anzahl der offenen oder unklaren, noch mit dem aufklärenden Arzt zu besprechenden Fragen nahm nicht signifikant mit dem Patientenalter zu. Während Patienten unter 30 Jahren vor dem Arztgespräch ca. 2 offene Fragen hatten, hatten Patienten über 60 Jahre ca. 5 offene Fragen. Patienten zwischen 30 und 60 Jahren hatten noch ca. 4 Fragen, die mit dem Arzt besprochen werden sollten. Die Gesamtdauer eines Aufklärungsgesprächs mit dem Arzt betrug im Mittel unter 2 Minuten. Signifikante Unterschiede im Zeitaufwand für das ärztliche Aufklärungsgespräch konnten zwischen den einzelnen Altersgruppen nicht festgestellt werden. Die Tablet-basierte digitale Aufklärung ermöglicht unabhängig vom Patientenalter und der Anzahl der offenen Fragen vor dem Arztgespräch eine mit vertretbarem Zeit- und Arbeitsaufwand zu realisierende rechtssichere Ablage der Dokumente, bei der das Risiko des Datenverlusts durch die Logistik und Archivierung von Patientenunterlagen reduziert werden kann. · Die digitale, Tablet-basierte Patientenaufklärung kann mit vertretbarem Zeit- und Arbeitsaufwand durchgeführt werden.. · Die Tablet-basierte Aufklärungsdauer ist vom Alter der Patienten unabhängig.. · Die digitale Aufklärung leistet einen wesentlichen Beitrag zur Verbesserung der Arbeitsabläufe in der Radiologie..· Alikhani B, Hensen B, Grosser A et al. Initial Experience with Digital Patient Briefing in Computed Tomography. Fortschr Röntgenstr 2019; 191: 540 – 546.

Vehicle kilometers travelled (VKT) directly reflect the extent of spatial interaction within society and economy. VKT is also a key figure to quantify the use of road infrastructure. Consequently, VKT is one of the most important statistical indicators in traffic and transport. For a country with substantial cross-border transport relations such as Germany, VKT must be differentiated in national and domestic VKT: national VKT is the mileage of vehicles registered in Germany while domestic VKT is the mileage on German territory by German and foreign vehicles. This paper presents the most current German VKT survey, Fahrleistungserhebung (FLE) 2014, which comprised two elements: a motor vehicle owner survey to measure national VKT and traffic counts to measure domestic VKT. Vehicle mileage figures with deep stratification of both national and domestic VKT can only be generated through such special empirical studies. The focus of this paper is on the vehicle owner survey and national VKT.

International audience; Satellite Image Time Series (SITS) are large datasets containing spatiotemporal information about the surface of the Earth. In order to exploit the potential of such series, SITS analysis techniques have been designed for various applications such as earthquake monitoring, urban expansion assessment or glacier dynamic analysis. In this paper, we present an unsupervised technique for browsing SITS in preliminary explorations, before deciding whether to start deeper and more time consuming analyses. Such methods are lacking in today’s analyst toolbox, especially when it comes to stimulating the reuse of the ever growing list of available SITS. The method presented in this paper builds a summary of a SITS in the form of a set of maps depicting spatiotemporal phenomena. These maps are selected using an entropy-based ranking and a swap randomization technique. The approach is general and can handle either optical or radar SITS. As illustrated on both kinds of SITS, meaningful summaries capturing crustal deformation and environmental phenomena are produced. They can be computed on demand or precomputed once and stored together with the SITS for further usage.

There are some significant differences between the health systems in German speaking Europe and Sweden: In Sweden, the number of hospitals is small, caregiving services in the hospital and ambulatory sector are integrated, health professionals with university degrees are granted extended competencies and rights incl. first line consultation and limited prescription. Education is designed to prepare for these functions and responsibilities. It started more than 30 years ago when Linköping implemented the OECD-model of Health Universities. Interprofessional teaching, common learning of the various tracks and training on real patients are constitutive elements of this novel approach. Karolinska University in Stockholm adopted the model in 1998 and gave way to a nationwide reform. A recommendation of the German Science Council regarding training of health professionals, published 2012, drew the attention of educators to this approach. The paper explains the circumstances of the consolidation of this concept. It is important to realize that overarching governance principles and measures deriving from health and education policy are of crucial importance. They evolve from evaluations of needs carried out by the regional health agencies which lead to conditional mandates and financial incentives to the education sector. Moreover, decisions taken by the national board for accreditation and quality assurance take also in account the goals set and the outcomes in education and caregiving. Outside Sweden they would be considered an inappropriate limitation of academic freedom.The paper ends with a reflection of impressions collected during a study trip and shows some lessons to be learnt from the Swedish education and practice.

For sensible thermal energy storage in Concentrating Solar Power (CSP) plants, a molten salt mixture of 60 wt% sodium nitrate (NaNO3) and 40 wt% potassium nitrate (KNO3), known as Solar Salt, is commonly utilized. The paper presents semi-empirical estimation results of the density of Solar Salt and alternative molten salt mixtures with low melting temperatures in a range from 70 °C to 140 °C. These mixtures are Hitec, HitecXL, LiNO3–KNO3–NaNO3 and a multicomponent mixture. The paper shows that density values of mixtures can be closely predicted from single salt densities. The paper examines different estimation rules for mixtures. The quasilinear volumetric additivity rule (QVAR) is known for ternary reciprocal systems. For the first time, the presented work extends the QVAR to multicomponent mixtures. Temperature-dependent densities of selected salt mixtures of the system Ca,Li,K,Na//NO2,NO3 were estimated. Estimations are motivated by a fast and reliable method compared to time-consuming and error-prone measurements of several mixtures.

This paper presents the results from three-dimensional fluid-structure interaction simulations of an aeroelastic wind tunnel experiment which was conducted in the Transonic Wind Tunnel in Göttingen, Germany in 2013. The experimental setup consisted of two wings: a rectangular NACA0010 wing, which was used as a gust generator, and further downstream a three-dimensional elastic wing representing the outer part of a typical transport-aircraft wing, the so-called "Aerostabil" wing. Laminar-turbulent boundary layer transition has been tripped to generate turbulent flow. The investigations in this paper are focused on the numerical influence of fixed transition compared to fully turbulent simulations. The effect of the different aerodynamic modeling becomes most obvious for higher angles of attack. Compared to experimental data, steady simulations of static aeroelastic lift polars show the improvement of the numerical prediction accuracy for coupled simulations with fixed transition modeling. Moreover, unsteady simulations reveal a significant reduction of unsteady loads for simulations with fixed transition compared to fully turbulent simulations.

The exploration and potential future exploitation of solar system bodies requires technologies for precise and safe landings. Current navigation systems for landing probes are relying on a combination of inertial and optical sensor measurements to determine the current flight state with respect to the target body and the desired landing site. With a future transition from single exploration missions to more frequent first exploration and then exploitation missions, the implementation and operation of these missions changes, since it can be expected that a ground infrastructure on the target body is available in the vicinity of the landing site. In a previous paper, the impact of a single ground-based beacon on the navigation performance was investigated depending on the type of radiometric measurements and on the location of the beacon with respect to the landing site. This paper extends this investigation on options for ground-based multiple beacons supporting the on-board navigation system. It analyzes the impact on the achievable navigation accuracy. For that purpose, the paper introduces briefly the existing navigation architecture based on optical navigation and its extension with radiometric measurements. The same scenario of lunar landing as in the previous paper is simulated. The results are analyzed and discussed. They show a single beacon at a large distance along the landing trajectory and multiple beacons close to the landing site can improve the navigation performance. The results show how large the landing area can be increased where a sufficient navigation performance is achieved using the beacons.

The paper focuses on the performance and aging behavior of lithium nickel cobalt manganese oxide commercial standard material (NCM-111) which is improved with a post synthesis process in order to enhance the cathode active material of lithium-ion pouch cells regarding their capacity and cyclic stability. The aging behavior of the cells is analyzed with electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) during long-term electrochemical load cycling tests based on the Common Artemis Driving Cycle (CADC). Additionally, post-mortem investigations using scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and X-ray diffraction (XRD) were performed. The results demonstrate that post-processing of electrode active material is an effective tool to improve the properties of lithium-ion electrode materials, especially regarding high energy applications and lifetime optimization. The paper bridges the gap between lithium-ion battery electrode material development and the necessary cell testing under automotive relevant conditions which is important for the evaluation of new lithium-ion battery materials for automotive applications.

In-flight demonstration and verification of a robust flight control design including an advanced anti-windup strategy is presented in this paper. The test aircraft, an Ultrastick 120 unmanned aircraft, is equipped with a pitch- and roll-attitude command flight-control system for remotely controlled augmented flight. The longitudinal aircraft dynamics are enhanced with an H1-based control design. The controller additionally comprises an dvanced anti-windup strategy to avoid integrator windup during actuator saturation. The lateral axis features a linear-parameter varying controller which provides robust performance over the whole velocity range. The controllers as well as the anti-windup algorithm are verified and validated in a non-linear simulation environment and by various flight tests. The paper provides detailed insight in the design process of the controllers, as well as a comprehensive discussion on the simulation and flight test results.

This paper presents the first experimental demonstration of the virtual bandwidth synthetic aperture radar (VB-SAR) imaging scheme. VB-SAR is a newly developed subsurface imaging technique which, in stark contrast to traditional close proximity ground penetrating radar schemes, promises imaging from remote standoff platforms such as aircraft and satellites. It specifically exploits the differential interferometric SAR (DInSAR) phase history of a radar wave within a drying soil volume to generate high-resolution vertical maps of the scattering through the soil volume. For this study, a stack of C-band vertically polarized DInSAR images of a sandy soil containing a buried target was collected in the laboratory while the soil moisture was varied—first during controlled water addition, and then during subsequent drying. The wetting image set established the moisture-phase relationship for the soil, which was then applied to the drying DInSAR image set using the VB-SAR scheme. This allowed retrieval of high-resolution VB-SAR imagery with a vertical discrimination of 0.04 m from a stack of 1-m vertical resolution DInSAR images. This paper unequivocally shows that the basic principles of the VB-SAR technique are valid and opens the door to further investigation of this promising technique.

In this paper a particle filter for absolute train localization based on magnetic field measurements is proposed. The filter utilizes distortions of the earth magnetic field introduced by ferromagnetic infrastructure components along the railway track. The distortions are characteristic for a certain part of the track network and therefore are a source of position information. The particle filter introduced in this paper incorporates a prior created map of these distortions to estimate the train position. This only requires low-cost passive magnetometers and a simple movement model that accounts for the limited dynamics of a train. The feasibility of the approach is demonstrated in an evaluation with measurements collected on a train driving in a rural area. Overall a position root mean square error below four meters could be achieved, proving that the magnetic field is a viable source of position information that is independent from other localization systems like GNSS.

Self-tracking receivers have been suggested for satellite and mobile communication applications. In this paper, we propose and demonstrate an array receiver (Rx) architecture based on phase-locked loops. The system is capable of automatically tracking a moving source and providing direction-of-arrival (DOA) estimates calculated from array signal phase differences. After deriving the system transfer functions, we show a digital implementation of the receiver and experimentally prove its phase detection capability. In combination with an eight-element linear array and analog front ends, we build a hybrid receiver and demonstrate its DOA estimation performance in static and dynamic outdoor setups. This paper gives the details about theoretic principles, implementation concept, and realization of the proposed receiver. We demonstrate DOA errors below 4° and show the reproducibility of the results. Using dynamic experiments, we verify the tracking ability of the system, which makes it applicable to retrodirective antennas.

Pedestrian positioning is still a challenging field of interest when not receiving any GNSS or other reference signals as it might be the case in indoor environments or tunnels. For professional applications, where it is not possible to rely on any infrastructure, a common technique is to mount Inertial Measurement Units (IMUs) on the foot or other parts of the body for positioning. IMU based techniques still suffer from the remaining drift especially when the environment is unknown and not re-visited, or when the pedestrian walks randomly in large areas. In order to overcome this problem the so called FootSLAM algorithm applied in this paper is extended to handle known locations. FootSLAM is a SLAM (Simultaneous Localization and Mapping) algorithm estimating the map of the environment while walking wearing an inertial sensor on the foot or at other locations of the body. With only few known locations the estimated FootSLAM map can be refined or corrected in the case of non-convergence in critical areas. Beside the derivation of the algorithm handling known locations in FootSLAM, the influence of different kinds of prior information on the FootSLAM algorithm is analyzed in this paper in terms of error and map quality performance.

Die im südlichen Indischen Ozean gelegene, postkoloniale Inselrepublik Mauritius ist gegenwärtig Herausforderungen in ihrer Regionalentwicklung ausgesetzt, die in der Transformation der Insel von einer agrikulturellen, zuckerbasierten Gesellschaft hin zu einer diversen Ökonomie begründet sind. Die Verbesserung der Lebensbedingungen in allen Regionen des Inselstaates soll durch einen dreigliedrigen Ansatz der regionalen Entwicklung erreicht werden, der im Wesentlichen aus einer Sonderwirtschaftszone, dem internationalen Tourismus und Investitionen in die Informations- und Kommunikationstechnologie besteht. Der Aufsatz analysiert, ob diese Strategien erfolgreich in der Verbesserung der Lebensbedingungen in Mauritius sind. Die Regressionsanalyse verdeutlicht, dass lediglich der Informations- und Kommunikationssektor einen positiven Einfluss auf die Lebensbedingungen zeigt. Er ist allerdings hochgradig sozial selektiv. Dagegen weist der internationale Tourismus einen negativen Einfluss auf die Lebensbedingungen auf, da die parallel auftretende Verknappung von Immobilien zu hohen Wohnkosten in den touristischen Gebieten führt. Die Sonderwirtschaftszone zeigt ebenfalls einen schwachen, negativen Einfluss. Der Aufsatz folgert aus diesen Ergebnissen, dass die existierenden Regionalentwicklungspfade in Mauritius ambivalent sind und vorsichtiger politischer Anpassungen bedürfen, um das übergeordnete Ziel der Verbesserung der Lebensbedingungen auf der Insel zu erreichen. Postcolonial island state of Mauritius, located in the South of the Indian Ocean close to the eastern coast of Madagascar, is currently facing challenges of regional development due to a transition of the island from an agricultural, sugar-based society to a diverse economy. The improvement of living conditions in all regions of the island state shall be achieved by a tripartite approach of regional development consisting of the export processing zone, international tourism and marked investments in information and communication technology. The paper analyses whether these strategies are successful in enhancing conditions of living in Mauritius. The regression analysis reveals that the information and communication sector shows a positive impact on regional development only, although it is highly social selective. By contrast international tourism has a significant negative impact on living conditions because of the accompanying scarcity of property resulting in unaffordable housing in tourist areas, whereas the export processing zone displays just a minor negative impact. Thus, the paper discloses that the existing regional development paths in Mauritius are ambivalent and need carefully political improvement to accomplish the purpose of an enhancement of living conditions in all regions of the postcolonial island state.

The environmental control system of an aircraft is a complex energy intensive system and the most important non-propellant consumer of energy among all aircraft systems. Considering the highly competitive market for conventional aircraft, meaningful analysis methods for evaluation during conceptual design of ECS and effective modelling and simulation tools became more important. Hence, this paper focuses on energy and exergy analyses applied to the conventional aircraft environmental control system combined with the model-based design approach. The reported results are related to the different analysis methods for aircraft environmental control systems and cover the model-based design approach. The exergy method is applied to a model of a conventional air generation unit of a commercial aircraft. This model was developed using a model-based design framework. Within this framework, the exergy analysis was performed for four phases of a standard flight mission: Take-off, cruise, landing and taxi. The results obtained from the detailed exergy analysis show highly varying performances for the components at the different simulation cases. The exergy efficiencies range from 1% to 88%. A discussion about the special requirements for aircraft environmental control system analysis methods concludes the paper.

Current measurement techniques do not allow the visualization of the return air flow of open volumetric receivers in solar tower power plants. The reason is that the region of interest is irradiated by concentrated solar radiation and is located on top of a tower. Therefore, a novel method of measurement, the Induced Infrared Thermography (IIT) is introduced within this paper. With this method the return air can easily be observed with an infrared camera. As air has a very low emissivity in the infrared region the activity has to be induced by the addition of an infrared-active component, here carbon dioxide. The temperature of the infrared-active component has the greatest influence on the signal strength but the mole fraction of the component and the distance to the infrared camera are also important. Due to temperature restrictions, the measured signal to noise ratio is low and therefore several post-processing steps have to be conducted to visualize the return air. The most important step for the visualization is subtracting a background image. Furthermore, a video filter is employed in order to remove noise. A time series of ITT images can be used to obtain information on the velocity fields of the flow. The process, called Infrared Image Velocimetry (IRIV) here, is similar to Particle Image Velocimetry (PIV) and is applied in this paper to external fluid flows of the open volumetric receiver. As IRIV is in an early stage of development the depicted results are treated as qualitative vector fields.

In this paper I will discuss Aristotle’s controversial philosophical views on women. I will critically examine three main interpretations of his claim that women have deliberative faculty “without authority”. According to the first line of interpretation, Aristotle has in mind that women’s incapacity of advice-giving and decision-making in public affairs are determined by conventions in the political context of his time. I will attempt to point out the disadvantages of this kind of interpretation. Furthermore, I will put forward the reasons why is implausible the more recent interpretation, given by Marguerite Deslauriers. According to her reading, the lack of authority of deliberative faculty in women means nothing else than the tasks over which women have authority are for the purpose of the tasks put forth by men. The prevailing interpretation among scholars is that, in Aristotle’s view, women are naturally inferior to men, due to the fact that they are all too frequently overruled by the irrational “forces” of their nature. I will argue that this line of interpretation elucidates what Aristotle presumably has in mind, although it makes his account of women and their rationality, if not inconclusive, then indisputably problematic. In other words, I attempt to prove that, if the prevailing line of interpretation is correct, such view of women produces some philosophically “insurmountable” problems for Aristotle. The aim of the last section of the paper is to point out how some of these problems could eventually be resolved. [Projekat Ministarstva nauke Republike Srbije: History of Serbian Philosophy]

The concept of innovation ecosystems gained significant importance in academic research on strategy and practice over the last years. The emergence of the Internet of Things is disrupting industries and setting the ecosystem in the focus of innovation. Even traditional analog industries, like the energy industry, are under pressure to foster and manage ecosystems during their innovation efforts. Thus, the energy industry represents an appropriate setting for examining the evolution of an innovation ecosystem under the empirical lens of controversies, which describe the challenges of the status quo and is congruent with previous research on dialectical inquiries as source of innovation dynamics. For the purpose of this paper, the Actor-network theory (ANT) is regarded as an appropriate tool since it allows researchers to analyze how actors interact due to their specific interests with each other and thus configure the ecosystem in its base. ANT further enlarges the perspective of handling actors, while it involves not only human but also non-human actors (i.e. technologies). This is a valuable and necessary feature while dealing with digital innovations such as virtual power plants (VPP). By analyzing three how distinctive typologies, their mechanisms as well as their pathways of controversies affect the innovation ecosystem of VPPs and the evolution of the technological components of the innovation, this interaction between human and non-human actors is highlighted. In consequence, our research emphasizes the significance of involving non-human actors into managerial strategies and the role they inherit for the evolution of ecosystems. Furthermore, the present research reveals that controversies are not only a moderating factor but also a constitutional one for the coevolution of the ecosystem as well as the innovation itself especially during the forming phases. With respect to recent research of the management of digital innovation, this paper contributes to a better understanding of managerial challenges associated with digital innovation and their respective ecosystems.

Whereas crowdsourcing as a topic has often been addressed in recent literature, web-based crowdworking platforms that manage the interface between crowdsourcers and crowdworkers have not received much attention so far. Furthermore, most of these platforms focus on either the management of external or internal crowds; platforms that handle both groups are rare. This paper investigates such a provider: the German company Across Systems. It uses a hybrid model, offering an individual “mini crowdworking platform” that enables the simultaneous government of external and internal crowds as well as a more traditional marketplace crowdworking platform (crossMarket) where supply and demand meet. Using a single-case study approach, the main contribution of this paper is to shed light on a model that has the potential to change the current crowdworking platform market. We show that managing both external and internal crowds on one platform can increase the acceptance, quality and speed of task completion.

This paper deals with a low to middle order finite volume/lumped capacitance thermal model of an electric machine and the correction of critical parameters. The different parts of the electric machine are divided into sub-volumes called finite volumes or lumped capacitances. From the given characteristic geometry of the electric machine, the thermal resistances to create the system matrix are calculated. The resulting non-linear equation system is solved for steady state condition for a given current density. The result is compared to experimental measurements allowing the calculation of material correction parameters included in the thermal resistances using the least square method. In a second step an experiment with time dependent current in the stator windings is done. The experiment then is simulated with the time dependent current measured in the experiment using the correction parameters found in the first step. The paper aims to present the possibility to calculate the maximum temperatures very accurately with this method.

This paper deals with the retrieval of agricultural crop height from space by using multipolarization Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) images. Coherent and incoherent crop height estimation methods are discussed for the first time with a unique TanDEM-X dataset acquired over rice cultivation areas. Indeed, with its polarimetric and interferometric capabilities, the TanDEM-X mission enables the tracking of crop height through interferometric SAR (InSAR), polarimetric interferometric SAR (PolInSAR) and the inversion of radiative transfer-based backscattering model. The paper evaluates the three aforementioned techniques simultaneously with a data set acquired in September 2014 and 2015 over rice fields in Turkey during their reproductive stage. The assessment of the absolute height accuracy and the limitations of the approaches are provided. In-situ measurements conducted in the same cultivation periods are used for validation purposes. The PolInSAR and morphological backscattering model results showed better performance with low RMSEs (12 and 13 cm) compared to the differential InSAR result having RMSE of 18 cm. The spatial baseline, i.e. the distance between satellites, is a key parameter for coherent methods such as InSAR and PolInSAR. Its effect on the absolute height accuracy is discussed using TanDEM-X pairs separated by a baseline of 101.7m and 932m. Although the InSAR based approach is demonstrated to provide sufficient crop height accuracy, the availability of a precise vegetation-free digital elevation model and a structurally dense crop are basic requirements for achieving high accuracy. The PolInSAR approach provides reliable crop height estimation if the spatial baseline is large enough for the inversion. The impact of increasing spatial baseline on the absolute accuracy of the crop height estimation is evident for both methods. However, PolInSAR is more cost-efficient, e.g. there is no need for phase unwrapping and any external vegetation free surface elevation data. Instead, the usage of radiative transfer based backscattering models provides not only crop height but also other biophysical properties of the crops with consistent accuracy. The efficient retrieval of crop height with backscattering model is achieved by metamodelling, which makes the computational cost of backscattering inversion comparable to the ones of the coherent methods. However, effectiveness depends on not only the backscattering model, but also the integration of agronomic crop growth rules. Motivated by these results, a combination of backscattering and PolInSAR inversion models would provide a successful method of future precision farming studies. This work has been supported by the Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey (TUBITAK) under project 113Y446, by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (MINECO) and EU FEDER under projects TEC2011-28201-C02-02 and TIN2014-55413-C2-2-P.

Cet article présente le logiciel « PixScape », un outil pour modéliser le paysage visible à partir de données spatiales numériques. PixScape offre l’avantage d’être un outil intégré regroupant l’ensemble des fonctionnalités disponibles dans les outils SIG standards existants dans ce domaine et proposant d’autres fonctions originales. Il facilite l’enchaînement des tâches dédiées aux analyses de visibilité et propose une large gamme de métriques fréquemment utilisées. Son originalité repose notamment sur le choix entre deux méthodes spécifiques de calculs de visibilité et la possibilité d’analyse avancée de la configuration des scènes paysagères. L’article présente un panorama de l’ensemble des paramètres d’analyses offertes par PixScape, les métriques de visibilité disponibles, ainsi que les méthodes de parallélisation visant à réduire les temps d’exécution. This paper presents the PixScape software dedicated to landscape visibility modeling based on digital spatial data. PixScape is an integrated software combining all existing functions in standard GIS tools in this field, and proposing ‘other original functions. It facilitates the overall processing chain of visibility analyses, and offers a wide range of commonly used metrics. Its originality is to offer a choice between two specific methods of visibility computations, and the possibility of advanced analysis of landscape visible configuration. The paper presents an overview of all the visibility analysis parameters offered by PixScape, all the available visibility metrics, and the parallelization methods for reducing computation time.

As bit rates of optical interconnects increase, a large amount of complicated signal conditioning is needed to compensate for the insufficient bandwidth of current modulators. In this paper, we evaluate the reduced equalization requirements of high-bandwidth plasmonic modulators in short-reach transmission experiments. It is shown that transmission of 100 Gbit/s non-return-to-zero (NRZ) and 112 Gbit/s pulse-amplitude modulation-4 over 1 km and 2 km distance is possible without any receiver equalization. At higher bit-rates, such as 120 Gbit/s NRZ, data transmission is demonstrated over 500 m with reduced receiver equalization requirements. Transmission up to 200 Gbit/s over 1 km is also shown with more complex receiver equalization. The reduced complexity of the receiver digital signal processing is attributed to a flat frequency response of at least 108 GHz of the plasmonic modulators. All single wavelength transmissions have been performed at 1540 nm in standard single mode fiber.

Cet article interroge le lien entre formes urbaines et performance énergétique. Aujourd’hui, face aux enjeux du développement durable, de nombreux urbanistes ont choisi de promouvoir la ville compacte. Si le lien entre compacité du bâtiment et performance énergétique n’est plus à prouver, cette relation est moins évidente à l’échelle du quartier, et d’autant moins à l’échelle urbaine, tant la ville est complexe dans sa composition morphologique et spatiale. Cet article analyse d’abord le contexte de la recherche énergétique à l’échelle urbaine et conclut à un nécessaire changement d’échelle pour une réflexion énergétique à la recherche d’une densité urbaine raisonnée. Puis, la recherche menée comprend deux temps. Une première étude introductive propose une analyse comparée de six configurations urbaines archétypales, à densité égale, sur la base de critères énergétiques. La seconde étape correspond au travail principal de la recherche : la mise en place d’une méthode d’optimisation par algorithmes génétiques de la morphogenèse d’un morceau de ville au regard de trois critères (énergie, densité et ensoleillement direct). Enfin, les résultats de cette optimisation sont présentés, le but étant plus spécifiquement de discuter les intérêts et limites d’une telle méthode de morphogenèse micro-urbaine. This paper deals with the link between urban forms and energy balance. Nowadays, many French urban planners recommend dense and compact cities to suit the imperatives of sustainable development. Dense cities are usually said to consume little energy and space, contrarily to more spread out cities. In the last twenty years, many studies showed the compactness of a building can impact its heating loads: the more compact the building, the lower its heating consumption is. But, this relationship between form and energy is less obvious on a city-wide scale since the forms and morphologies of cities are complex. First of all, this paper presents the urban and scientific context our study is relating to. It concludes that a change of scale is necessary to suit energy efficient (pieces of) cities with "reasoned" urban density. Then our research is divided into two parts. The first one introduces the issue of density distributions by analysing the energy efficiency of six archetypal urban forms that have the same density. The second one deals with the main study of our research: the morphogenesis of a piece of city thanks to a genetic algorithm optimisation process considering three parameters: density of population, energy performance and sun penetration. Finally, the results are detailed, aiming at discussing advantages and limits of such a micro-urban morphogenesis method.

Range accuracy of synthetic aperture radar using modern satellites has been proven in centimeter-range after consideration of geodynamic, atmospheric effects and systematic errors; it is so-called Imaging Geodesy technique. Based on this technique, we have proposed the next-generation of Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) products and developed operational software SAR Geodesy Processor in the previous paper. In this paper, we are concentrated on validation of processor and accuracy analysis on a global-scale. Two datasets with different spatial resolutions generated from European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecast are used to compensate atmospheric refraction effect in range. At the end, we apply corrections on a Sentinel interferogram by using both datasets.

This paper analyzes distributional effects the EU Emissions Trading Scheme (EU ETS) created between participants of the scheme during its first trading period. To this end, a dataset recording all transfers during the first period of the EU ETS, originally at account level, was enhanced by adding information about parent companies, firm characteristics, and carbon prices. A two-step selection model was formulated and applied to the data. To account for a number of uncertainties, sensitivity analysis with regard to forward and futures trading was carried out. Findings confirm that free allocation in excess of actual emissions (‹overallocation›) is a major source of gain generated under the Scheme. The fact that small companies are much less likely to participate in trading is a further cause of distributional effects. This paper also discusses that windfall profits obtained by passing through the cost of freely allocated allowances to consumers are likely to dwarf the gains and losses made on the market for EU Allowances. It is therefore quite likely that the majority of companies covered by the EU ETS generated gains during its first period, either through selling overallocation on the market or by generating windfall profits on product markets. Therefore, decisions about the level of free allocation not only have distributional implications for the participants of an emissions trading scheme but determine the distribution of costs and benefits between covered companies and households.